*
I get an email from Frank. It says:
You could call it the guillo-peen.
*
On my father’s birthday I bring him a book about the birds of New Jersey. I do my best watching him scrabble away at the wrapping paper like he has salad servers for hands, then give up and rip it off myself. I pass him the book; he wraps it around his shoe. Then we sit and watch Sing Your Heart Out until the TV is the only light in the room.
*
My father’s illness is something I used to think was temp, but now I know is perm.
*
Frank and I have started an email chain filled with disturbing things we experience throughout our days. The idea behind it is that if one of us had to live it, the other should too. I guess that’s friendship or something.
Blind woman tripping over the curb.
Baby rat dead on the subway tracks.
A condom, empty but seemingly used, outside Gray’s Papaya.
*
“What are you smiling at?” asks my mother.
“Nothing,” I say. “Email from someone at work.”
“Is it a picture of a cat?” she asks. “The girls from synagogue are always sending me pictures of cats. What the heck do I want to look at cats for?”
“I think that just goes with the territory of being an older woman,” I say.
“Menopause is the only thing that goes with the territory,” she says. “Everything else is just marketing.”
*
Frank wants to open an office in Paris. He’s listening to tapes that will supposedly teach him French in a month. He says a couple of sentences to me that sound pretty good. They mean “Do you like vegetables?” and “Were you pretty as a child?”
*
Myke tells me Frank’s wife is an artist from England. He tells me she is the fetal age of twenty-five. He tells me they got married in the summer and that she’s come to the office once. He tells me she is hot.
*
“The one thing I will not tolerate is absolutely anything less than perfection,” says the woman in black walking ahead of me down Fifth. Later on, I try repeating this to myself as I go about my day. The one thing I will not tolerate is absolutely anything less than perfection. Nice try, I think.
*
Everyone I know is either more successful or more interesting than me. This realization is nothing new. In fact, it used to feel like everyone I didn’t know was more successful and interesting than me too. I still remember the sensation of watching a talent show on TV as a child and realizing that the girl dancing was a whole year younger than me. She was wearing a red sequin dress and patent tap shoes. She looked like a ruby, a human jewel spinning across the stage. I was in my pajamas from T.J. Maxx eating cereal for dinner, already destined for a life of mediocrity. Why didn’t I just pull myself together back then? I was five! I could have turned it around!
*
I meet Frank’s friend Anders, who used to be the art director here before leaving for some big-shot title at a fashion magazine. What it’s like to be a straight single man in your mid-forties at a place like that, I can only imagine. He is also almost insultingly handsome. When Frank introduces me, his gaze slides over me like he’s scanning a news article he has realized too late is of no interest to him but must somehow finish.
*
I get an email from Frank. It’s a video of Peruvian pan flutists playing “Hotel California” on the subway platform. Every time it comes to what should be the end of the song, it starts up again.
Lived this for fifteen minutes today, now you must too.
*
“You’re smiling again,” says my mother.
“Uh-huh,” I say. “That happens sometimes.”
“What are you smiling at?”
“Just work stuff.”
“On the weekend? You think I was born yesterday. Who’s the guy?”
“It’s work, Ma.”
“Okay, so you two work together. What’s his name?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So there’s something to talk about!”
Scientists discovering microscopic life on Mars sounded less triumphant.
“Nope. Nothing to talk about, Ma,” I say.
“Ellie,” she says more quietly. “I just like to hear about what makes you happy.”
I look at her. She is getting smaller every year.
“Okay,” I say. “Yes, we work together. His name’s … Myke. With a ‘y.’ That’s all you’re getting.”
“Myke with a ‘y’！” She throws her hands in the air. “And why not? Myke. Myke! I like it. A mover and shaker called Myke!”